[nisten]

In 2017 Intel acquired mobileye( the makers of the autopilot radar in the early Teslas), for 15.3 Billion. That begs the question, if Tesla were to sell their autopilot system tomorrow, , given it's safety record, amount of training data, and new FPGA processor IP, how much would it be worth? 15, 20, 40?

This is why I find their delivery numbers completely and utterly irrelevant to company value. This is a just a technology company that has produced a great user experience and is now scaling it.

Their main bottleneck is battery production and they're very competitive at it.

If the bottleneck was auto-manufacturing they would have no trouble raising enough investment to just buy out a car company.

[reitzensteinm]

Tesla has 11bn in debt, alongside other obligations like warranties.

If they can't make the car thing work, and their autopilot tech sells for as much as mobileye, shareholders are going to be wiped out in the event of liquidation.

How the cars are selling and what margins they're getting matters a great deal, even if you believe that the long term value comes from autopilot.

[nisten]

Looking at the competition, ford, VW, Mercedes. Their battery production numbers look pretty mediocre. Also their cars are less and less competitive in a rising carbon market.

[reitzensteinm]

You're making an argument that Tesla is going to sell cars. That's fine.

But previously you said delivery numbers don't matter because autopilot is valuable. That's what I was responding to and could not be more wrong.

[justapassenger]

It's not really easy to compare value of Tesla autopilot IP with mobileye.

Tesla AP is a highly integrated, custom product, that works only with Tesla cars.

Mobileye was (and still is) general automotive supplier, with most of car companies as their clients. Intel didn't buy just tech - it bought all also the integrations and market share.

[abduhl]

Which car company do you imagine Tesla would have "just bought out"?

Keep in mind that Tesla couldn't even raise enough money to buy out themselves, not even at the incredibly discounted price of $420/share.

[nisten]

Actually they could and did raise enough to buy themselves out and have done so every time.